Apple’s approach to public relations is pure genius. Hold a handful of media events every year, but otherwise stay silent. It makes the company a blank canvas. And countless fans, blogs, and media outlets will paint that canvas as they see fit. Thus we have reports like this, of unannounced Apple products with unannounced release dates being “delayed.” Silly? You bet. But let’s take the bait anyway, and see if there’s anything to it.

After listening to supply chain chatter, Kuo says that production hitches have pushed those release dates back. He doesn’t give firm ship dates (Apple may not have those yet), but he does give us some general time frames:

iPhone 5S: ships as early as September, or as late as November

Budget iPhone: ships as early as August, or as late as October

iPad mini 2: ships as early as September, or as late as November

Juicy details

Kuo, however, didn’t stop there. He’s a machine, and knows no bounds. He reiterated some of his earlier predictions about each of these gizmos:

The iPhone 5S will have a fingerprint sensor, and come in multiple colors. The color coatings and biometric sensors are supposedly presenting some challenges (interference), contributing to the “delays.”

The budget iPhone will have a plastic shell, and it too will come in multiple colors. Apple wants to make the shell as thin as possible, which is also pushing things back.

The 2nd-gen iPad mini will have a Retina Display (that’s 2048 x 1536 resolution). “Technical challenges” related to its design and build are also slowing things down.

Lull

We might be in the middle of a long dry spell in between Apple releases. Apple’s last event was to introduce the